Authors: Stuart Keane
“For your impoliteness – and only that – you can blame yourself. The only person getting fucked will be your wife. I'll make sure that I say hello from you to her, just before I tear her in two.”
Charlie stood up. He gripped the sledgehammer beside him. Gripping it in two hands he swung with all of his might. The hammer swung down on the man’s head with a tremendous force. His skull split open like a soft melon. Brain, skull and sinew exploded all over the carpet. The body beneath twitched and convulsed, then there was no movement.
Alpha was dead. Charlie dropped the hammer. He pulled his Blackberry from his pocket and dialled.
“Yes…yes, I need you upstairs. Yes, fifteenth floor. Just some brains and bone and blood. In fact, you might need to organise a carpet fitter for the morning. Yes, I still want you to clean it up. The shit is messing up my office. I have to work and I can’t do that with bits of body around me. Yes. Thank you. See you soon.”
Charlie hung up. Pocketing his phone, he turned back to the monitor. He smiled in glee when he saw the sadist sharpening his machete. He was taking his time. He was methodical, a professional. Doing just as he had been told.
Charlie sat back in his chair. His erection had returned.
He sipped on his drink and resumed viewing.
TWENTY
Kathryn sipped a can of Coke and waited. The drink felt cool on her lips and it sent a refreshing calm throughout her body. She gulped a mouthful and put the can on the desk beside her, giving a small burp. The new clothes made her feel more comfortable and she didn’t feel as vulnerable anymore. She stood at the top of the first flight of stairs with an open set of double doors in front of her. She stepped through cautiously, unwilling to take any risks.
The room before her was just an average office. All she could see was row upon row of desks with computer monitors set on top of them, infinitely patient technological soldiers standing to attention. Various corkboards adorned the walls. Random business strategy, graphs and team photos were pinned to these in haphazard fashion. Some walls had transparent Perspex panels, which were clearly used as makeshift drawing boards. Unknown numbers, diagrams and words were written on them with arrows indicating they were related to the next line of text in some specific manner.
The desks were littered with the individual workers’ possessions: photos, name badges and various other personal items. Some chairs even had coats hung on their seatbacks. On several desks sat identical blue mugs. Judging by the company slogans scattered around, it was clear that these were company branded mugs for the employees. Bulky white printers sat in each corner of the room. Some desks were separated by grey dividers. A huge desk was at one end of the room, looking very much like it belonged to the boss: this desk was not partnered with anyone else’s and it also held a laptop charger dock.
Yep, definitely the boss’s desk
, Kathryn thought.
Typical company strategy. The boss can work offsite anywhere they want to, but the minions have to come to the office every day, like drones. Kathryn knew the system well.
She knew it well because this was
her
office.
But it couldn’t be. There was no feasible way it was possible.
But she knew it was. The feel, the layout. The familiarity.
Her office was located miles across town from her home. The road outside this place, with the damaged theatre, and the half-naked crazed psychos, most certainly were not sights she passed on her daily commute to work. And this building, from the outside, was
not
the building she came into every day.
Yet here she was now, standing in her office. From the bulky out-of-date printers to the photos on the desks, all exactly in their normal places. It was as if someone had ripped the office out of one dimension and put it here. Yet Kathryn knew she wasn’t taking part in an episode of Star Trek. This couldn’t be happening.
Kathryn placed the shoulder bag on a desk. After getting her bearings, she took another sip of Coke and headed towards the rear of the room. The door she’d entered from allowed her to come into the room from the dead centre. The room was an L shape and the door she was currently near to was in the heart of the L shape itself. Towards the rear of the room was her desk. She had to see it for herself, only then would she know if she was mistaken. A lot had happened tonight, she could be imagining things - Kathryn tried to rationalise what was happening: there had to be a thousand offices which had this type of interior layout. She walked across the room.
It suddenly dawned on her that the room was empty. Normally her office would be bustling with activity: people on phones chatting to their customers, managers holding meetings in corners of the room, the occasional person texting on their phone, in contravention of company rules. It was common for people to consume unhealthy amounts of various energy drinks. In other words, a typical office environment. None of these scenarios were being acted out today and, as a result, the place seemed very eerie.
Kathryn sidled up to her desk, aware, but not altogether certain, that she was alone. When she reached it she stopped in shock.
Her everyday workstation was here. In every lavish, personalised detail. Her wireless keyboard and mouse were there. Her photo of France was sitting at its usual angle, facing her chair, but not angled enough to allow the light from the window behind to shine on it and blind her. Her binder, complete with various video game stickers and logos, was on her chair. The chair itself was tucked under the desk. Everything was complete. Everything except one thing.
She bent down and lay down on her back, then slid under the desk and looked underneath. One boring day, she remembered that she had used a permanent marker to graffiti on her desk. She had been under there organising her cables, and checking that her new keyboard and mouse worked. And while thus occupied, she had drawn on the underside of the desk, despite feeling it was a juvenile thing to do. She’d done it because, at the time, it had seemed a cool thing to do. She had stencilled her initials in a little cross. It was a small detail, but it was important to Kathryn.
Such a small detail hadn’t been noticed by whoever had set up this ‘facsimile office’. It seemed this office was either someone’s attempt at a copy, or else this was a bad dream. This ‘someone’ had tried to emulate her personal life and was trying to toy with her: to prod her, as if they were poking a bear. Kathryn felt like a guinea pig in a sick experiment.
And she didn’t like it!
Kathryn sat on her chair and tapped her keyboard. After a few seconds her monitor lit up and the sign-in screen prompted her for a password. She started to type and hit enter. Seconds later the PC started to log her in.
Kathryn stretched her arms on the desk. She laid her head in them and wanted to scream. This whole situation didn’t make sense. Doppelganger offices and crazy psychotic lunatics chasing her? Being locked in a cell that wasn’t even locked? It just wasn’t normal activity for anyone. If someone had created a detailed copy of her office they had gone to a lot of painstaking effort. The ambience of the place was very authentic, down to the smell of toast from the break room to the smell from people’s coats hanging on the back of their chairs.
It was her office, but it wasn’t. She thought that maybe someone had switched the desks around. It had happened before. But then that didn’t explain the different entrance, the entire building being somewhere other than the workplace she was used to: even the reception area was different. None of this made any sense.
What the hell was happening?
The Windows programme’s familiar chime signalled that her computer was starting up. She looked up and waited for her browser to open. She was used to waiting. This had been how her mornings had started every day for three years so far. She counted once, that it had taken her PC seven minutes to fully prepare for the day. Finally logged in, she opened her browser and tried to surf Google. Nothing happened. No internet connection was detected. Strike two against the ‘continuity chiefs’ here. Unable to go online, Kathryn then logged off. A noise distracted her.
Had it come from this room?
The window shattered behind her. A hail of glass showered her back, sending her reeling from the chair in panic. Three seconds later one of the psychos leapt through the opening. The wind blew the blinds inward violently, the slats becoming entangled. The new arrival pushed them aside and leapt at Kathryn. She backed up to another desk.
The man paused, surveying the scene.
Remembering her four pursuers in the jeep, she recognised him as the one with the greasy long hair and acne. His eyes were pinned on her, the man licked his lips in anticipation of what he was going to do to her. He had a baseball bat adorned with nails strapped to his side with a crudely tied black belt, which hung harmlessly behind him. He was naked apart from the belt and a pair of Nike shorts. Judging by the loose pull chord, these had once been white, but were now a hue of orange and brown. It was clear that they hadn’t been washed in some time. His body was etched with various tattoos, as if an infant had been given free rein to scribble on him with a biro. It was the same for his arms, which were skinny while the muscles were toned. The scribble of the tattoos emphasised his gaunt appearance.
His gaze followed Kathryn. His eyes were bloodshot.
Kathryn stared back. She was poised, ready for anything.
He smiled, his yellow crooked teeth, many of them missing, looked like the damaged keyboard of a cheap piano. His tongue probed the toothless gaps hungrily. His face was scarred from virulent acne. Several whiteheads peppered his chin. One had burst, a stream of dark pus coursing down his chin, which had congealed in his stubble. His eyes were crazed.
Kathryn wasn’t an expert, but she guessed that he was high on some drug, possibly heroin. He bobbed from side to side in excitement, the drug-induced high making him twitch. His hair didn’t move at all, stuck flat against his head as it was with days of grease and dirt. His left ear was missing, a depression in his skull marking where the ear had been crudely removed. Folds of skin served as a reminder of the missing body part.
Kathryn thought she might vomit. Instead she stared him down.
“Purt’ lady! You mighty fine! I could lick those titties all day long!” the awful creature said to her.
Kathryn didn’t respond. She remembered seeing a documentary on psychosis once. At the time she had thought it had been a load of shit. The expert had said that engaging with someone with a psychosis was a recipe for danger. She tried to think back to the documentary she had so readily mocked. Being in this situation had changed all her perceptions, for now she had no alternative experts to tell her what to do. She continued looking at the man.
He took a step forward. Drool now formed on his lips. “Wha’ ya say, sweet cheeks! Fancy a fuck? I bet your pussy tastes lurvlyyyy!”
She backed up a bit more, but realised a desk blocked her way. To advance she would need to go sideways or turn away from the beast in front of her to find her path. She didn’t want to do that. Sideways was the only option. She started edging away from the desk.
And walked straight into the huge black guy with the bulging tiger-striped thong: one of the other three men in the jeep. She literally smashed into him, as if he was a wall, her head bouncing off his pectoral muscles. He was about a foot taller than her, just standing there looking down at her. From her low angle, his face was partially hidden by his gigantic pectoral muscles. There was a huge grin on his face. She could feel his bulging genitals poking her in the ribs. Kathryn stood, dazed and dumbfounded.
Then he hit her. Hard. Kathryn flew across the desk with a crash. She slid along its smooth surface and fell off the end. The monitor, keyboard and cables wrapped around her arms as she fell to the floor in a heap. Stationery rained around her on the floor until everything was still. Her face was throbbing with pain.
“
Yeah! What a strike!
Genghis, you are a fuckin’ monster, dude! Right on!” yelled the tattooed man.
“Shut up, Boyd,” the black man replied.
Kathryn knew she was in severe danger. She stood up, kicking the cables from her legs and arms. She put her finger to her nose and realised that her face was bleeding. The man’s fist must have been the size of a frying pan. She knew she was lucky to be conscious. She didn’t want to imagine the alternative.
Boyd was standing on her desk, looking for her - or waiting for her to emerge. Genghis hadn’t moved. He simply cracked his huge knuckles. Staying below the desk, Kathryn worked out a plan. She remembered the hammer from reception. It was in her bag behind Genghis, on the desk alongside her Coke. Somehow she needed to make it past him unscathed. Taking another hit would be suicide, but she needed her weapons.
Kathryn slowly rose from below the desk. Boyd saw her move.
“
Hahaha
, there she is…That’s what you call a bitchslap,
biyaaaatch
!”
He did a small dance on her desk and kicked the monitor. It flew through the shattered window and the cable pulled out taut behind it, she heard it smash against the wall outside on its way down. She'd loved that monitor.
Kathryn wiped the blood from her nose and edged sideways. Genghis followed her with his eyes. He still didn’t move. In the distance, Boyd still danced on her desk. Other objects flew against the walls as he kicked them in celebration. Genghis swivelled now, his whole body facing her.
He was a huge mountain of a man, his muscles were like slabs of concrete, and the veins like cables strapped to poles. She noticed his tiger thong again. He didn’t have an erection anymore. Probably had issues with that, considering the drugs fuelling his bloodstream. His thighs were so huge that they pressed against one another. He had a bodybuilder’s physique, but she knew he hadn’t built it the hard way. She knew she could use this fact to her advantage.
Aware that it could be a risky move, Kathryn decided that she had to somehow draw him away. But would her idea end badly?
“Hey…hey, fuckface!” she yelled.
Genghis stared at her.
“Yeah you, Godzilla, what gives you the right to slap a woman? You get off on it? Make you feel like a man, does it?”
Genghis shifted towards her. He wasn’t smiling anymore.
“Yo, whore, don’t you address me like that. I’ll break you in half!”
“Address? My God, we have a scholar in town. You’re welcome to try breaking me in half–”